500 Boylston Infill | 500 Boylston St | Back Bay

Re: 500 Boylston

I'll take 500 Boylston over International Place any day. But the courtyard is dead space even when people are coming and leaving work. An indoor retail/winter garden would be a huge boost not just to usage but to the property value.


Would you take the location thou? Who has the better location IP or 500 Boylston? The Greenway vs the Backbay?

I'm going with the Greenway.
 
Re: 500 Boylston

Would you take the location thou? Who has the better location IP or 500 Boylston? The Greenway vs the Backbay?

I'm going with the Greenway.

No way. 500 Boylston is in as prime of a location as you can get. In contrast to Copley Square/Back Bay, the FiDi is largely void of life and difficult to access as there is (oddly) no transit in the FiDi.
 
Re: 500 Boylston

Both are great locations and have their unique benefits/superlatives. But Back Bay wins as the neighborhood-wide comparison, IMO.
 
Re: 500 Boylston

Both are great locations and have their unique benefits/superlatives. But Back Bay wins as the neighborhood-wide comparison, IMO.

While the Back Bay has been "it" for a few decades there was not much new development

For the past cycle the development has been along the Greenway and the area is rapidly coming on in its status -- and now again for the first time in a decade the Back Bay is developing

Overall -- Both are works in progress -- come back in a decade or two and we can debate again
 
Re: 500 Boylston

Once a neighborhood is no longer a work in progress, that neighborhood begins to die.
 
Re: 500 Boylston

Once a neighborhood is no longer a work in progress, that neighborhood begins to die.

That's a matter of the scale of the "Work in Progress" -- there a plenty of vibrant places where there are lots of on-going changes without there having to be leveling of blocks or even necessarily knocking down any exterior walls -- Newbury St. being in general such a place
 
Re: 500 Boylston

Irony and cheap cynicism are poor design styles and 500 has it in spades. This wart will unfortunately be around for probably the next 50 years.
 
Re: 500 Boylston

I also like both buildings. Glad that Johnson's was not repeated, and I generally enjoy Stern's work. I missed the ability to traverse through the buildings unimpeded after 9-11, and the winter garden in the Stern building turned out to be a joke, since it was almost inaccessible on the second floor. I look forward to filling in the courtyard and adding retail that will blend in with what is already there. Can't hurt...and the location is excellent, bookending Copley Sq. with major retail destinations.
 
Re: 500 Boylston

Ok. Not that this building compares to the misery of the Town Hall building but wasn't that a big deal for brutalism when it was built?

What town hall do you mean? I can't think of one town in the area that has a Brutalist town hall. Unless you mean Brookline, but I think that's probably more mid-century international..
 
Re: 500 Boylston

What town hall do you mean? I can't think of one town in the area that has a Brutalist town hall. Unless you mean Brookline, but I think that's probably more mid-century international..

I think it was in reference to City Hall.
 
PNF filed: http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/2c9f4eb3-90c0-493f-9e29-9613aa50f1b0

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1.1 Introduction
Five Hundred Boylston West Venture, an affiliate of Equity Office Properties (the Proponent), proposes to develop the courtyard space of the existing building located at 500 Boylston Street (the Project site) in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston. The courtyard space of the site will be developed into a six-story, approximately 79,300 square foot (sf) building with up to three floors of retail and office space above, and up to 50,000 sf of office space in the existing building at 500 Boylston Street is anticipated to be converted to retail space (the Project). In connection with the Project, the entrance at 222 Berkeley Street, which is owned by another Proponent affiliate (Two Twenty Two Berkeley Venture), will also be improved with two new vestibules totaling approximately 700 sf of gross floor area. One vestibule will provide access to approximately 8,350 sf of second floor office
space that will be converted to a restaurant, and the other will expand the existing first and second floor Bank of America space.

The Project will improve the pedestrian experience along Boylston Street by filling in an underused courtyard with ground floor retail space that will activate the sidewalks and street edge on Boylston Street, and will improve the retail experience by creating an improved pedestrian connection between Berkeley and Clarendon Streets, through 500 Boylston Street and 222 Berkeley Street. The Project will re-orient the 500 Boylston Street main lobby entrance currently on Boylston Street to Clarendon Street. This new Clarendon Street entrance will create a welcoming lobby with generous seating. In addition, there will be a new retail entrance on Boylston Street as part of the new activated streetwall.

The Project will also provide construction and permanent jobs, and improved tax revenues for the City as well as numerous benefits to the public realm.
The proposed Project exceeds 50,000 square feet of gross floor area, and the Project is therefore subject to the requirements of Large Project Review pursuant to Article 80 of the Boston Zoning Code (the Code). This Expanded Project Notification Form (PNF) is being submitted to the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) to initiate review of the Project under Article 80B, Large Project Review, of the Boston Zoning Code.

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Plans:
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Detailed Floor Plans for those interested (links)
Level 1: http://i.imgur.com/puLn8pd.png
Level 2: http://i.imgur.com/iO4uXb4.png
Level 3: http://i.imgur.com/4LkINco.png
Level 4: http://i.imgur.com/aFSd8Zz.png
Level 5: http://i.imgur.com/c6oMfzT.png
Level 6: http://i.imgur.com/JBo59Ct.png
 
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This looks cheap and awkward. Not to mention, why would you plunk a zigzagging glass facade in the middle of this orgy of PoMo?
 
This looks cheap and awkward. Not to mention, why would you plunk a zigzagging glass facade in the middle of this orgy of PoMo?

Not sure about the cheap, but it definitely looks awkward--a whole "and now for something completely different" interlude within an already somewhat over-busy façade. There's an argument to be made that this enclosure should be as neutral and unprepossessing as possible.
 
Weak and half-hearted was my first reaction. But first reactions don't often translate once the final product gets built. Hopefully this design is improved during the review.
 
It's CBT. This is basically what I expected from them. They are the crate and barrell of architecture.
 
So a strange BCDC meeting happened yesterday for this project. No official decision was made but all present spoke out against this project. See tweets below.

The iQubed Design guy has been perhaps the loudest vocal opposition to this project and defender of 500 Boylston's horrendous & pointless courtyard.

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They should put a retractable roof with some sort of stage/entertainment/merchant/activity area
 

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